Many eyes are hungrily on the Arctic. The polar region is opening to resource hunters and shippers who see huge advantages in the unfortunate loss of its ice. Heavier development will inevitably find its way north, with enormous impact to ecology and indigenous societies. This month, Jessica Bridger, a LAM contributing editor, reports on the research by Leena Cho and Matthew Jull and their Arctic Design Group. Cho is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and Jull is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia. They have taken landscape and architecture students to Svalbard, about as north as the settled north gets, to study urbanization patterns and develop design responses to the environmental challenges of industry amid the receding ice and shifting permafrost—signs of much more to come.

In Catalonia, Tim Waterman views the city of Girona as the landscape architect Martí Franch has connected it—humanely, narratively—through removal of vegetation that opens up views and creates connections. It’s as much an act of radical maintenance as it is design. And in El Paso, Mark Hough, FASLA, considers the University of Texas campus newly designed by Ten Eyck Landscape Architects of Austin. It regenerates the desert site (with its Bhutanese architecture) with the vigor you would expect from Christine Ten Eyck, FASLA. In the Back section, Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, writes on the work of the artists Helen and Newton Harrison and its suggestive flow into landscape architecture. And in Books, Julia Czerniak reviews The Course of Landscape Architectureby Christophe Girot.

In Now, read about postcoal scenarios for Utah and new moves in Scandinavian urbanism. The Office section asks firms about their collaboration software setups. In Water, Sasaki has helped Cedar Rapids, Iowa, get ready for its next big flood. In Tech, we have the intriguing potential of 3-D scanning for landscapes. And in Goods this month, we have fences—but only nice, almost come-hither fences. The full table of contents for January can be found here.